Tracking I.R.A. killer

Press, 2 May 1984, Page 13

Tracking I.R.A. killer

“Harry’s Game,” produced by Yorkshire Television, was one of the most talked about, controversial and highly acclaimed series of 1982, winning praise from the critics and a top British award for its author, Gerald Seymour. Originally shown as a thriller series transmitted on three consecutive nights, it has now been re-cut and will return tonight as “Hairy’s Game — The Movie,” a taut, nail-biting 2%-hour television film, screening on One. It was adapted by Seymour from his international best-selling first novel of the same name, and stars Ray Lonnen (of “The Sandbaggers”) as Captain Harry Brown, a British agent sent undercover into Belfast to track down an LR-A. killer, Billy Downer (Derek Thompson). The story was described by one television critic as “an object lesson in the art of credible television.”

Captain Harry Brown, alone in a nervous, sus-picion-riddled city, must, find his quarry before his own time runs out and he is exposed to the. I.R.A.

Though set mainly in Northern Ireland, the story begins on the streets of a London ill-prepared for violence. On what was a normal, everyday early morning in fashionable Belgrave Square, Henry Danby, British Secretary of State, is gunned down in front of his wife and two daughters on the doorstep of his own home.

Across the square, Billy Downer, his assignment complete, folds down the tubular steel stock of his Kalashnikov automatic rifle, slips it beneath his coat and quickly melts into London’s morning rush hour. And so begins a game of cat and mouse — a game in which one mistake, one slip could mean death.

Harry Brown’s orders are simple, brief and to the point. On the personal wish of the Prime Minister he is to go into the Falls Road, watch, listen, track down and eliminate the Minister’s killer. Only a handful of people will known he is there. There will be no Army back-up.

But the I.R.A. communications network is second to none. Harry will be a stranger, and strangers are not readily accepted in Belfast. Hostile eyes will watch his every move. Who can he trust? How long will it be before he makes that one mistake which could cost him his life?